In the Earth Abides the Flame (69 page)

'Who were the ones who desecrated Joram basin?'

'You mean those who attacked us? The ones who have chased us since we left Instruere. The Arkhos of Nemohaim.'

'The ones who broke through my snares in the Vale of Neume?'

Leith nodded.

'What happened here? Where are the others? I have searched Joram basin. Friend and foe alike seem to have vanished. Where are they?' His voice had none of its customary control.

'I don't know,' Leith said despairingly, fighting back the bile that threatened to rise into his throat. 'The whole mountain just dissolved. Belladonna said it was the Sentinels. People fell off the cliff, or into the great chasm. I don't know if anyone escaped. I don't know why I'm still alive.'

'Bella was right,' said Maendraga. 'The Sentinels were set in place to destroy the unworthy.

But were the unworthy ones your party or those who followed you here? Perhaps both.'

Reproach shone from his eyes. 'You should not have come here. I warned you.'

'Yet we found the Jugom Ark,' said Leith quietly.

'You found it?' His eyes widened.

'We found it in a cave on the island, and I bore it back to the shore. There we were waylaid by the Arkhos and his men.'

'You bore it?'

'I did.'

'The first since Bewray,' Maendraga said. He took a deep breath, then wiped his hands on his cloak.

'Where is it now?'

Leith shrugged his weary shoulders. 'I don't know. Lost down the chasm, under a rock somewhere. It could be anywhere. I lost hold of it when the earth shook. It's gone now.'

Yet even as he said the words, he knew it was not lost, that all he had to do was think about the Arrow, attune his mind to it, and it would be found. He was linked to it now; he would never lose it again.

But did he want it found? Did it matter, now that his brother and his companions were lost?

Did anything matter? Of course it does, he told himself. This is more important than any of us. But the thought made him feel worse, not better. Duty over love once again.

'Lost?' Maendraga cried in anguish. 'Swallowed by the earth? It cannot be!'

The youth could not tell whether the magician referred to the Arrow or to his daughter.

Perhaps he meant both. Leith held out his hand and thought on the Arrow. The familiar tingling rippled across the palm of his right hand. Some distance ahead, slightly to the right and amongst a pile of detritus, the Arrow flared in answer.

In a moment they stood beside it, the Jugom Ark flaming quietly as though waiting confidently for the hand it knew to pick it up. Maendraga bent down to touch it, but drew his hand away even as Leith barked a warning.

'It burns,' he said. 'It burns anyone but me. I don't know why.'

'Here lies my life,' said the magician. 'At least I thought so, before - yet 1 am not stirred. I don't know what I expected. The Arrow is filled with magic, a great sustaining power, as would be expected of an object that had rested in the hand of the Most High. But it is not alive. Any one person is worth more than this relic' As he spoke he closed his eyes, and Leith could tell the one person he thought of was Bella.

'Little value, yet great value,' said Leith. 'If it proves able to deliver Faltha from the Bhrudwans.'

'It will do no such thing,' the magician said absently, his mind still elsewhere. 'People under the guidance of the Most High will do that. The Arrow is a tool, a symbol, nothing more.'

Leith bent over and grasped the Arrow firmly and without hesitation, not allowing any doubts to cloud his mind. The shaft was cool to the touch.

'How did you escape the Arkhos and his men?' Leith asked. 'We thought you had been captured, or worse.'

'I created an illusion just before they came upon me. I suggested that I looked like a large rock, so they just ignored me. They must have taken Belladonna by surprise.'

'They must have,' Leith echoed hollowly, his grief reserved for a less pressing time. 'But we can't remain here, not with the Arkhos somewhere about.'

'I will remain here long enough to find my Bella. I do not believe they would have been able to kill her. Perhaps she left the basin. I will find evidence—' A thought struck him, and he turned to the young man.

'You found the Jugom Ark just by sensing it. Can you do the same for your companions?'

Leith shook his head automatically. 'No, I—'

'You must try!' The force of the words shook Leith like the rumbling of mountains.

He tried. For hours the man and the boy wandered the chaotic wreckage of Joram basin, searching for their loved ones, calling their names. They both watched the Jugom Ark for any indication it could help them in their search, but it did nothing other than give off a small, constant flame, reflecting Leith's bitterness of spirit.

He tried to summon the voice in his head, but all he received in answer was a headache. They found no sign of those they searched for, though in truth Leith wondered how anyone might leave a sign of their passage on such a landscape as this.

'She is not dead,' Maendraga asserted time and again. 'She knows how to protect herself. She is alive. No Falthan could kill her.'

But what about the Sentinels' mage? Who could stand against that? Leith wanted to ask, but he dared not. There was precious little room in his heart for hope.

Noon passed and the bitter afternoon hung about them, grey and cold. 'We should leave the mountain soon,' Leith said gently. 'We do not know what happened to the Arkhos and his men. It would not be safe to remain here another night.'

'Yes, we must move on,' Maendraga concurred reluctantly. 'We must take the Arrow back to the Great City, so at least her loss will not have been for nothing.' The former guardian of the Arrow choked back a sob.

He doesn't know what to believe, Leith realised.

The two men looked at each other then, and there, on the shattered remains of the sacred mountain, they shared their sorrow silently, and without words forged the bonds of a partnership that might sustain them until the end.

Their fledgling partnership was sorely tested even before they left the basin. Leith and Maendraga could not agree on which way to go. Leith favoured the direct route northwards, retracing the steps of the Arkhimm through The Peira, the Valley of a Thousand Fires, the land of the Mist and Deruys. When Leith recounted the perils of the route, Maendraga flatly refused to accompany him. 'It is my clear duty to go where the Jugom Ark goes,' he said, 'but I will not be party to foolishness. We would be better served to journey down the Vale of Neume to Bewray, and there take ship for Instruere. Besides, if any of the Arkhos's men remain, they must have gone the way you have suggested. At least, none came past me, nor did anyone use the scree slide. We must return to my house and gather provisions for our journey.'

Leith argued hard and long, but at last saw the sense in the older man's arguments and acquiesced. Carrying this thing has not made me any cleverer, he thought.

They spent a few minutes building a rock cairn in memorial to their lost companions. 'Not that anyone will ever come up here to see it,' Maendraga said in a voice of stone. They left Joram basin and made the long descent down the scree slope. Numbed by sorrow, Leith found it held none of the excitement of his previous descent. As they made their way down the weather cleared, but the castle was not visible.

Maendraga shrugged. 'Nothing to protect now.'

At the bottom of the scree slope they made a fortunate discovery, for here was where the Arkhos had left his horses. Prime steeds they were, all in superb condition, though clearly spooked by the earthquakes and rockfalls high above them. They appeared to have taken no other harm from their night in the open with nothing but grass to eat. Encouraged by their good luck, Maendraga and Leith chose the two best horses, and let the others go free.

The Jugom Ark proved itself a difficult companion. Leith found he had to hold the steel shaft tightly; any easing of his grip and the heat of the Arrow bit into his skin. After a few hours his hand and wrist ached beyond belief, and neither frequent changes of hand nor setting it down on stone (it set fire to grass) alleviated his pain much. As they neared Maendraga's cabin his arm resembled Hal's, all twisted and useless-looking. The memory sent emotions cascading through his body, and he twisted himself tighter to hold them out.

The next few days were for Leith a numbed succession of mounts and dismounts, of riding, eating and sleeping, of hours alone with his thoughts, his weariness and his grief. I would surrender the Arrow and the power it promises in order to see my brother again, he thought bitterly. Faltha is nothing. Just a collection of self-interested kings ruling over ignorant people, all manipulated by a traitorous council that might as well be Bhrudwan. What remained to be saved? The only worthwhile products of Faltha died trying to save it. Did it always have to be this way? Did the best have to be sacrificed to save the worthless? In a flash of intuition Leith saw the truth of it. Only the best could die for the others because only the best saw anything good in them, anything worth dying for. All other martyrs died for their cause, their struggle, their beliefs. Selfish deaths. Like his own quest. Here he was, not because he really wanted to save Faltha, but because he wanted to appear courageous and virtuous in front of his friends. He wanted to prove to others — no, ultimately to himself - that he was important. But now he could see he was completely unimportant, totally unnecessary. Yes, there had to be someone to carry the Arrow north. But the only talent required for that task was the ability to keep going, and he doubted his ability to do even this.

How many others did you ask to do this? he asked the voice within. How many others do you have lined up in case I fail?

And in a thousand years' time will there be another Arkhimm to complete the task? To succeed where we fail?

The voice did not answer him.

The Vale of Neume took them initially away from their goal. Bewray, the capital city of Nemohaim, was many days' ride to the northwest, but the steep-sided valley cut a determined path to the southwest through the grandest scenery he'd yet encountered. Everything here was on the largest scale, inhuman in scope. Towering above him were steep, vertiginous slopes, too steep for his eye in his present mood; mountains that seemed improbably tall, made yet more intimidating by the knowledge further bulk towered behind the shoulders blocking his view. Vistas perhaps more suited to a giant than to a person like him. He could imagine the vast figure of the Most High striding down the valley, looking like the carving in the Hall of Lore in Instruere, mountain shoulders coming no higher than his waist, able to see beyond them to distant lands. In any other mood, at any other time Leith would have allowed such primal beauty to affect him. Now it barely registered on his troubled mind. Afterwards he could not recall clearly a single scene from the Vale of Neume, perhaps the most searingly beautiful place in Faltha.

Perhaps he had become accustomed to the Arrow - or it to him - for he found, as they travelled, it became easier to hold, demanding less effort, less apt to burn him if he relaxed his grip forgetfully. Leith had not the energy to examine why this should be so, and perhaps he would not have cared had he known.

Four days into their journey he had exchanged few words with Maendraga beyond the necessary communications required by politeness. 1 loved him, 1 loved him, he repeated in his mind and muttered under his breath, grinding it into the fabric of his consciousness: 'I loved him, I loved him.' Which soon became J left him, I left him; and finally I killed him, I killed him, I killed him. All the time he knew he had not killed his brother, that Hal had chosen this road himself, as clearly, if not more so, than Leith himself had; but he felt guilty, and could not stand the inner tension of this nameless guilt, so gave it a name. Indifference.

Jealousy. Neglect.

Murder.

That evening they camped in a boxwood thicket. The weather had turned, becoming perceptibly warmer as they rode down the valley, away from the knot of high mountains surrounding Kantara. At this end of the Vale of Neume it was still summer. The air was warm and thick, the rain that fell in the afternoons caressed them rather than assaulting them like all the northern rains Leith had ever known. Wildflowers dotted the landscape: daisies and buttercups interspersed with tall flowers that looked like red-hot pokers, others richly scented with delicate trumpets, still others clumped in bushes, the flowers hanging down like dancers with wide, frilly dresses. Above them birds roosted, arguing noisily over the prime perches. But while Leith saw these things, he did not smell the flowers, did not feel the summer, did not hear the songs in the birds' calls.

'Want to talk about it?'

Leith spun around, heart in his mouth. It was Maendraga, back from gathering wood for the fire. Leith grimaced: he had been staring at nothing for ten minutes, and had not even taken their food out from his pack.

'Talk about what?' he said quickly. But he knew, and knew Maendraga knew.

'We need to talk.'

'No,' said Leith firmly. 'You'll only say it wasn't my fault. You'll use reason and logic to make me feel better. You'll remind me you lost your only daughter, but she chose her own destiny and it would be foolish to blame yourself. You'll expect me to adopt the same attitude towards losing my only brother. But while he was with me I treated him badly. You don't know what he had to put up with. Jealousy, hatred, fear. I couldn't see it then, but I can see it now. So I don't want to hear your arguments. I need to feel the way I feel. I feel like I killed him. Leave me alone.' The Jugom Ark flamed angrily in his hand.

Maendraga opened his mouth and shut it again. Clearly that was, in fact, precisely what he was going to say. He turned away and busied himself with preparing the fire.

As the mountains shrank to hills and the landscape took on dimensions less disturbing to the human eye, Maendraga the magician began to consider a problem that obviously had not occurred to the boy. How, here in the land of Nemohaim, where the Jugom Ark was central to folklore, were they to prevent people taking a dangerous interest in it - and them?